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1-12-1937

UA37/23 WHAS Broadcast No. 50WHAS

Western Kentucky University

Earl Moore

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liHAS BROADCAST No . 50

January 12. 1937

4: 00--4:30 P .M.

From Extension Studio in Bowling Green

Strines W Voices "Collep:e He1.r;::ht s . 11

~ Western Kentucky State Teachers College greets you all both great

and small with the worda of our college motto - - -

Voices Life 'tore Life .

~(Qore Life More Life ia our r.1.otto and our wish for all our listeners .

Vibr~uhone Chords .

MOQre The prop:ram today is entitled "American Folk He r oes ." This

subject will be discussed by Dr . Gordon Wilzon . head of the Depart­

ment of English of Western Teachers College . Dr . Wilson has for

ma~v years been a thoroughgoing student of folklore . particularly as

it affects local American customs and traditions. He is the author

of the series of articles now appearing in about one hundred Kentucky

daHv and weekly newspapers under the title uTidbits of Kentucky

Folklore . tI He "ill now discuss IIAtlerican Folk 'Heroes , I! with in.­

cidental folk music being supplied by our studio musicians, who are

students in the College . Dr. Wilson .

Wilson The very nature of American life since the first settlements

were made has cau~ed us to produce many oddities of character . Before

lSOO there had appeared in tradition and in literature such tyPes

as the frontiersman or scout , the canny rustic philosopher , the

Indian , and the Negro . The early nineteenth century brought into

public consciousness such types as the Southern o.ner, the poor boy

who became famous. and the ptron~ man or boaster; by the end of the

Civil War all of our folk heroes were known, th~ Inter ones bein~ the

Jan . l? Page 2.

cowboy, the desperado , and the Pike or professional pioneer . These

ten ~haracter8 seem to be our distinctive popul~r heroes .

We someti~es think that th~ IndieD did not become B pooular

fl~re until he was a vanishin~ memory of olden times .

TO::l-to"n "lUsic (10 seconds)

Wl1~on In re~lity ODe of the hardened IndiAn fl{hters Who overcame

Pontiac in 176~ ~ote a play within a yenr ~fter this outbreak in

which he drew the red man as a hero of epic proportions . Philip

Freneau . the poet of the Revolution. wrote several poems on Indian

life . and in the early nineteenth century Bryant . Whit tier . Cooper ,

Simms . and Cueti3 carried on this literary tradition . Investl?At~rs

like Schoolcraft studi ed lov:iD.glvthe history and lore of the Indians :

the monumental ALGIC RESEARCHES blos8oned into Lon~ellow's HIAWATHA • .

Dve

Wj, lMA

Indian music, violin (about 1 :30) .

Even today nothing catches our a ttention any more auickly than

Indian tradition : musical . litprnry , or otherw1~e.

Dye (violin) and Arnold (tenor) begin

"By the W~ters of I1nnetonka"

~~l~i~iAns like Lieu~rance have taken Indian melodies and made the~

grel"'t music . And fo1klori .. t~ "'l1.1 over the land fire preserving every

scrap of Indi~n custom and tradition .

~ rn1 Arnold "By the Waters of .1nnetonkB. . 1I

Wilson As soon as the first settlements were plEmted aloIl€ the coast.

daring souls began to sepk out wilder and ~ore In~ccessible places .

The frontiersman or 2COut was A reality lony before the ?rent trek to

Kentucky and the West . Cooper drew this type best . but he was merely

puttin? into books what all the settlements had known for generations .

When the West beca~e our frontier , it was eesy for people to t ransfer

their conceptions of the scout to such actual chAracters a~ Davy

Crocke tt . Buffalo Bi ll. and Kit Cnroon . So thorou~ly had this type

Jan . 12. P,,€e 3.

beco~e a folk hero that it is nearly impossible to separate actual

events in the lives of the Western scouts fro~ traditional hapoenin~s

that have been the common property of scouts since the earliest

times in America .

~ (violin) and Atcher (ter-or and euitnr) "Oh S'u;a!l.I1a, II f"'...di~ for :

!il~2n The Pi~e or professional pioneer was a close relative of the

scout . The name ~RS given in Cplifornia to the dURtcovered, tobacco-

chewing immigrants who had come from Pike County , Missouri, with

their large families and their few earthly possessions . Joe Bowers early

(Dye and .A.tcher 01.l.t)

became a representative of the race . It seems that Joe needed a

flnanci~l start before marrying hiG girl in Mi~8~uri and therefore went

to Califor ny and tried to raise a stake.

tl J.<..v nAJ"le it is Joe Bowers; I ' ve ~ot a brother Ike . I come from old Missouri. yes . all the way from Pike . I ' ll tell YOU why I left that and how I CRme to roa~ And leave ~ pore old mammy, my country, and my home .

"I used to love a gal thar; her name was Sally Black . I ast her if she ' d marry me: she said it was a whack . Says she to me , "Joe Bowers , before we hitch for Ufe , You ' d better buy a little home to keep your little wife ' .11

And so to the gol~dig€ings went Joe . There he got rich, but Sally

meanwhile had married a butcher "whose hair 'mS awful red . " Bret

Harte used Pikes extensively in his Western storteR; John Hay found

the type c!')"l'rlon in the Middle West; Baldwin, LOIll?:street . and Sidney

Lanier found him in the Southern hills . Every section ha~ its own

Pike: hil lbilly, share cropper, squatter .

])ve (violin).e.nQ. Atcher (tenor.ill E""lit"r) ItpOp Goes the Weasel ," fading for :

In our own time the hillbilly is the phase best known, since the

wholesale westward movement has ceased . Only rarely has the hillbilly

been nresented honestly ; it takes a genuinely sympathetic mountaineer

to interpret the type, with his fa t alistic reli~ion, his love of old-

Jan . 12. Page 4 .

fashioned music , hie primitive conceptions of right and wrong .

his wellfTounded suspicions of people from the more fertile areas .

(Dye B,nd Atcher out)

Atcher ( tenor and euitar) "Barbra Allen . II

No type is more alive today than the cowboy , in api te of the

fact that he began to lose hie place in reality a generation ago ,

with the passing of free land . He has become for millions the

symbol of romance, as heroic a figure as King Arthur was to the

disappointed remnants of the days of chivalry . Travellers to the

West came back with Texas cowhorns , Texas saddles, and sombreros .

It was a poor netghborhood indeed that could not boast of one or

more of these symbols of the cowboy , and every fiddler and banjo­

picke!' could play or sing nO BuryJ.1e Not on the Lone Prairie . 1I

~ (ll1l2.l:) "Oh, Bury l!e No t on the Lone Prairie . II

Wilson Since the radio has becoMe com~on, the cowboy has again COMe

into his own ; cowboy songs , actual. or imitation, are heard nearly

every day .

Atcher (tenor illli! gui tp.r) "Get Along, Little DO€,:ies . 1I

An actual dogie song, as long as the old Chisholm Trail itself .

reappenrs often and served as one o:~ the inspirations for ti l I m

Heading for the Last Roundup. II

Grabill (ll1l2.l:) li The Last Round- Up ."

Wilson As with the scouts . it is impossible to distinguish the actual

cowboy from the traditional figure : Owen Wister l s Virginian and

Theodore Roosevelt seem e~ually real . Will Rogers cOMbined the

achieveMents of the cowboy with the philosophy of the rustic and is

about the most typical product of our frontiers . The cowcoy tradition

seems to be one of our most persistent and picturesque folk contri-

Jan~ 12 . Pege 5.

butions .

nColorado Home .1t

Wilson The American bad man is the lineal descendent of Robin Hood

and has somehow always attracted the attention of the co~on man,

Who no doubt identified him with oppressed people. Our ancestors

glorified the people who fled from tyranny to America; it is diffi-

cult even yet t o keep from identifying our bad men with the national

tradition . The spirit of the Civil War found for itself a hero in

John Brown ; many of the folk identified Jesse James with the Lost

Cpuse, and that may account for some of the stan7.as in a popular

Jesse Jnmes ballad :

Chorus UJesse Ja"1es . II

Wilson That the desperado as a type still holOOTomance is a~tested

by the thousands that attended the funeral of Pretty Boy Floyd and

the crowd that rushed up to dip their handkerchiefs in t he blood of

John Dillinger .

Sometimes the frontiers~ or the hillbilly , or some other

type blended into that of the boaster or bully . Davy Crockett ,

famous as a frontiersman. was equally famous for his boast of being

II half horse , half alligator . with a little touch of snapuing tuttle ." •

Mike Fink . the t ypical rivern~n. ran the gamut of boasting with hie

rigmarole: 111 can out- run . out- hop , out- jump , throw down , drag out ,

l i ck any man in the country . I love the women , and I a~ chock~full

of fight ,II Others proudly boasted of being able to lick their

weight in wildcats, of having nine sets of jaw teeth. of being a

steamboat or an elephant , or, in still later times , of being abl e

to fight a circle saw .

Grabil l (~) li The Highly Educated \fan . It

, Jan . 12. Pspe 6.

Wil~Qn The boaster is only another form of the teller of tell

tales . Besides Mike Fink, the riverman. there are three of these

mighty yarnspinners 1n American folk thou~~t : Paul Bunyan, of the

North Woods: Old Stormalong , the strong sailoT; and John Henry, the

giant from Black River, Who pitted his stren(th against ma~hiner/.

only to go down 1n a sort of epic struggle in a contest with a

steam drill .

~ (viol in)Rnd Atche r (guit6r) ti The Arkansas Tr Elveller " fa,dinp- fo r :

Wilson Our rustic philosopher has had many reincarnations . The stage

Yankee. created as eurly as 1787 as Jonathan in Royall Tyler's

~ ~~. ~~s for many years our conception of the village

wiseacre. Lowell's Hosea Biglow is of exactly the sa~e tradition .

John Phoenix. Josh Billihga. Artemus Ward , Bill Arp-- the list of

rustic wise men is endless. In our own time Abe MEI_rtin , the simple

farmer from Brown County, Indiana ; Ring Lardner, with his Whole

society of tL~~am~tical philosophers ; and Will RO£ers. cowboy ,

lecturer. actor, traveller , have l~u¢hed us into sanity . Every

newspaper has one or more columns devoted to the wise sayings of a

typical rustic philosopher. but probably ,the best representatives

of this type a.re today to be fm.md sitting around the country store .

saying wise things that will never find their way into print.

(Dye and At cher out)

Probably our most persistent American type is the poor boy who

became famous . He is the modern version of the downtrodden character

in the fairy stories : Cinderella among the aShes and Lincoln 8tudyin~

Jan . 12 .

by a pine- knot fire; the yo'mg lad who rose from poverty and

married the princess and Grant following the horse along the

towpath; the beggar maid who captivated King Cophetua and the

Page 7.

Scotch immigrant boy who rose to be a treat millionaire- philanthropist-­

the~e are e~ually possible in the folk mind. This is so real to

most people that it is hp.rd to convince them that many of our great

characters have had an even break and that some of them were actually

wealthy . America as the land of opportunity is an ideal that I find

still living in the minds of the children of people who came to

America after 1900 .

Chorus and Strings I1 Carry '~e Back to Old Virgi~ny, II fading for :

Wil.son The Southern Colonel is so well known that a few deft strokes

will reveal him: eoatee , mustache. slouch het , serious dipnity, and

far- away look in the ayes . In 11 terature he· seems to have been the

crs"tion of John Pendl eton Kennedy in Swallow Barn, published in 1832 .

Harris , Page, and others have added little to this early conception .

(Chorus and Strings out)

It I'1Quld be folly to attempt any other kind of portrait; even if thie

type is scarce and always has been , we want our plantation owner to

be e true-blue colonel after this fashion.

Chorus ~ Strinvs "S\'Ving Low, Sweet Chariot, ft fading for :

Wilson There are three Negro types that eV6rybody knows : the old

retainer-philosopher of the lfhcle Remus or Uncle To.m variety ; the

Negro ma~~y : and the comic , or Jim Crow , Negro . The woes of Uncle

Tom somewhat overshadowed his other qualities; it remained for Irwin

Ruesell , Page , and Harris to r ound out the picture of the k1ndly ,

quaintly humorous , wise old slave , who took pride in his white folks

and Who felt it an honor to entertain the younger generation with

tales about the good old days before the war . The Ne~ro ma~y in

Jan . 1:') . Pa£e 8.

real life and in tradition had a freedom of speech allowed only

to such people as the court fools of earlier times . Jim Crow,

introduced in 1835 by T. D. Rice,s negro minstrel , represents the

co~ical , irresponsible side of Negro life. the somethlnF that we

~ll like in ~uch modern ~instrels as ~09 and Andy or Pick and Pat .

(Chorus and Strin?s out )

Though there are many variations of these types , probably these

ten represent what American folk thinkine: has thus far produced as a

picture gallery : the Indian , the scout , the Pike , the cowboy, the

desperado . the boas t er , the rustic philosopher , the poor boy Who

became famous . the Southern Colonel , and tho Negr o .

C~orus ~ Stri p ~s

\(oore This program , e~tlng fro~ the audit~rlum of Western Kentucky

State Teachers College in Bowling Green . has broupht you a t alk on

IIAmerican Folk Heroes ll by Dr . Gordon Wilson , hend of the Endish

Department and author of UTidbits of Kentucky Folklore ,u a series

famili~ to thousands of Kentucky. newspaper readers . Illustrative

music was urovided by students of the College , including WilliaM Lukes ,

Dale Grabill , Ji~~ie Arnold, Randall Atcher, Lavelton l}./e . and Jim~ie

Rutan , soloists : and ~!nry Gear , La1ua Salt . June Kerns , J . Lloyd IAmb ,

Gus Baize . Ednn Shields, Hary Frances McChesney, C. O. Evans . Jr . ,

Barbara' Beyer . John W. Koon , I\",rtha TRYlor , Flos"lie Hibbard. '{artha

Katherine Lampkin. William Morse Egbert, Leona Van D~sen. Sezel Kerns ,

Robert Chenoweth , John Farris , Nick Ungurenn, Hazel ORtes, and

William Glei chmanl"l ; ],Ii 3e '{ . ."ry Chi Gholm , ,..ccompani at ; Dr . D. West

Richards , director .

By permission of the publi sherl'l "Barbr~ Allen , 11 "Ch, Bury Me

Not on the Lone Prairie ." II Jeaee James , n Il Git Alan? , Little Do.ties ,n

•

Jan . 12 . Page 9.

and II I Was Born Almost Tpn Thou~and YefiTs ,L:.oO, " "ere selected

from Carl Sp'ndburg ' ~

Br ace and Compen..v .

~ Ameri CM Sonp"ba..o; . pubU shed by Harcourt .

We invite you to be with us again next Tuesday at four o ' clock

c . S . T • • when f\ play entitled tl Two Other People" will be presented

by students in Dramatics, under the direction of Professor J . Reid

Sterrett .

This is Earl Uoore saying goodbye until next Tuesday and

wishinp you Life More Life .

(Chorus and at r inF-s up and continue)